Transcriber’s Note
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SELECTIONS FROM

SAINT-SIMON
EDITED BY

ARTHUR TILLEY, M.A.
FELLOW AND LECTURER OF

KING’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
CAMBRIDGE

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

1920
PREFACE
It is not every lover of French literature who has the
leisure or the courage to read the whole of Saint-Simon’s
Mémoires, the text of which fills eighteen and a half
volumes of the edition of MM. Chéruel and Ad. Régnier
fils. Nor is it all of equal interest. I thought, therefore,
that a selection might prove acceptable to the busy or
faint-hearted reader, and perhaps even whet his appetite
for the work itself. In making the selection I have
practically confined myself to the first two-thirds of the
Mémoires, that is to say, to the reign of Louis XIV, and
I have chosen the passages with a view to illustrating
that reign during the period of its declining splendour.
In the first four chapters we have the Roi-Soleil and Mme
de Maintenon presented to us in their daily life. There
follows the account of the review at Compiègne, which
gives us some measure of Louis’s boundless extravagance,
and the greater part of the famous chapters on the
death of Monseigneur, surely one of the greatest things
in literature. Lastly there are thirteen portraits, including
such masterpieces as Conti, Cardinal d’Estrées,
Fénelon, the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy, and the
Duke of Orléans. In my notes I have confined myself
to the modest task of illustrating Saint-Simon from
himself, and of supplying such other biographical details

as seemed necessary. No one can annotate Saint-Simon
without being indebted to M. de Boislisle’s masterly
edition now in progress, but for my purpose the full
and careful index of MM. Chéruel and Régnier has been
of even greater service. The index to vols. I.-XXVIII. of
M. de Boislisle’s edition appeared after my work was
practically finished.
A. T.
Cambridge,

December, 1919.